The Experience behind User Experience Design

Elyse Sanchez, Tuesday, April 11, 2006 @ 5:13 pm

Back in the days of rigid gender stereotyping, Lily Tomlin observed that if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be, the world would be full of firemen and ballerinas.

I don’t recall aspiring to either of these vocations (too timid for the first, too tall for the other). More to the point, I never thought I’d eventually evolve into. . .ummm. . . whatever we’re being called today. Being WOTTI (Way Older Than The Internet), my education and professional expectations were defined in areas that seemed remote from technology, interface design, or usability. With degrees in English Literature and a late-blooming resistance to a life in academia, I began to accumulate the quixotic resume of the Liberal Arts graduate.

Eventually, I spent several years as an Instructional Designer (ID). As the internet boom gained increasing momentum, the small technology consulting company where I worked was acquired by a large technology consulting company, and our quirky New Media group was reinvented as the firm’s semi-quirky User Experience practice. Then, as now, we sought to crystallize our identity—and affirm our corporate value—by creating a clear, hopefully self-explanatory job title. I wince to remember that in the mid-90s we called ourselves (without irony) “Cognitive Engineers.” Now, “Information Architect” has gained currency, a title that retains the methodical and craft-like aspects of the role, while successfully distancing practitioners from the inevitably Devoesque connotations of spiky, mass-produced cogs and hand tools. To stay billable, “cognition” and “engineering” are two concepts that should not be paired on the same business card.

Actually, a background in ID is great preparation for a career in UXD. Both disciplines are solidly user-centric and require creativity as well as technique in planning and development. The two key goals of the Instructional Designer are to optimize content for organization and understanding and to determine learning goals and appropriate success metrics—both of which are important but often overlooked strategies in designing websites and applications.

The successful Instructional Designer has the ability to quickly understand and then effectively communicate information from complex knowledge domains. Although I’ve designed web-based training for neurosurgeons, you probably wouldn’t want me brandishing a scalpel in your OR. I may not be able to do—but I can teach. Our firm specializes in the design and development of complex applications, requiring a learning curve that approaches the perpendicular. This skill is valuable to me as a consultant as well as a designer.

I respect my colleagues who have had the benefit of formal training in HCI. I’ve had to create my own curriculum through reading, workshops, and work experience, and I wish I’d had the opportunity to study and experiment in a more cohesive and less project-driven way. But I admire—and have learned from—my peers who have come to UXD from more scenic routes. Certain disciplines have obvious synergies and commonalities—architecture, visual design, marketing, computer studies. But I know fantastic UXD practitioners from other backgrounds: quantum physics, music, healthcare. UXD is not an easy-entry profession, but it is one that welcomes the experienced traveler. I recently met an Information Architect with background and training in theatre, who feels that the persistent thread in her experience is the love of narrative—whether storytelling takes place on the stage or on the (computer) screen.

Maybe my friend and former colleague Jason lives in the best of all possible worlds: his undergraduate degree is in English, he has deep experience in development, and he’s recently completed his Master’s in HCI at DePaul. But who’s to say which of these experiences makes him an excellent User Experience Designer?

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